


Hours, days, months.

by AiriEgbert



Category: DCU (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Dysphoria, Pregnancy, dick grayson is a good friend, mentions of Birth, mentions of drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26263573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AiriEgbert/pseuds/AiriEgbert
Summary: It’s been hours. It’s been days. It’s been months. For this, right here.She’s here, nine months of hard work so she can be, and Roy takes back every bad thought he had about her. Lian Nguyen - Harper, 7 pounds and 8 ounces of wiggling red skin that screams the moment she can, stretching her limbs and curling her fingers while the nurses clean her off across the room.
Kudos: 19





	Hours, days, months.

It’s been hours. It’s been days. It’s been months. For this, right here.

She’s here, nine months of hard work so she can be, and Roy takes back every bad thought he had about her. Lian Nguyen - Harper, 7 pounds and 8 ounces of wiggling red skin that screams the moment she can, stretching her limbs and curling her fingers while the nurses clean her off across the room. Roy can barely see her, catching glimpse between the midwife cleaning him up and the nurses cleaning her up.

Roy’s still recovering, legs still in the stirrups while they feel like a pile of smashed up jello, and the rest of his body feels like utter shit. Sore, tired, really really gross with all the bodily fluids that had just been produced.

She’s here, though.

Roy can remember when she was near nothing, just that nauseated feeling in the back of his throat for a few weeks, putting him on edge that he might be sick, truly sick and in need of a hospital visit. It was Dick who suggested that he take a test, passing him one quietly while they had a hushed conversation in the med bay. Roy remembers staring at the box for a long time, going over dates and times in his head while his stomach flipped several times over.

Roy didn’t need to piss on a stick to know. He knew. . . Dick was smart enough to know too. 

Dick and him don’t mention it again for a week, not till he asks his friend if he would come with him to a doctor’s appointment, an experience that in and of itself was uncomfortable and earth shattering to Roy. God, he was pregnant. At barely nineteen he was already ten weeks pregnant, and he had no idea what to do about it. No idea how to handle that a clump of cells in him was slowly growing into a human.

Dysphoria and shame slam him into the ground there after, the moment they are back he is hidden in his room, thinking over every life choice he made before and has to make now. He remembers Arsenal being one of the first few people he told, and later down the last he asks why Roy didn’t get an abortion if pregnancy was so rough. Even now, though, Roy isn’t sure he has an answer, it just hadn’t felt like the right thing to do. 

Up until now, he had considered adoption, keep her for a few days, get her through weening, then pass her off to a nice family he found in uptown who knew Ollie. That had been until now.

Roy is pulled from his memories by Dick beside him, his best friend giving his shoulder a solid squeeze to get his attention back to the room and the matter at hand. His eyes dart across the room, watching the nurses wrap her carefully in the pink blanket, put that stupid little hat on her head. And then she is there, being held out to him. 

“ Roy? You wanna. . ? ” Dick sounds so hesitant, he had been the only one to really know the ins and outs of how rough this had been on him. There is even an underlying tone of concern while they both look at the little girl who had finally calmed down.  
“ Lemme see ‘er, ” Roy is a little surprised he can speak as clearly as he does, a little surprised at his own sense of urgency. She’s here. 

Lian is here.

The nurse is carefully passing her over, gently showing Roy how to hold her now that he has laid back into the bed. And Roy almost scrambles to hold her, finally able to see what makes these little humans so special. And when he does finally get a proper look at her he thinks he understands a little more. 

Babies aren’t anything special, they are all the same when born, ruddy skin, screaming, wiggly, all the same folds around their chubby joints. But she is different.

Roy feels a tug in his chest he can’t put words to, too busy looking her over, counting the fingers on her hands and listen while she tires herself out after all that racket of being born. This is his, this is all his hard work, the hardships of the nine months, wrapped up and in his arms. 

Lian is Roy’s. She isn’t Jade’s, she isn’t Oliver’s, and she sure as hell isn’t for that bougie family from uptown. He isn’t quite sure what the final straw had been, but there isn’t any giving her up. 

Roy can feel Dick next to him sit on the side of the bad, a hand rested on his shoulder while he looks down at her. He doesn’t look up to look at his best friend, too enamored with his daughter in his lap to consider looking away, so suddenly taken by the little life he didn’t think he would be so invested in. 

Maybe it’s hormones. No, it’s absolutely hormones but Roy doesn’t give a fuck. He can’t give a shit when he realizes tears are starting to well at the corner of his eyes, and within a few minutes of holding that tiny life he is bawling. 

This is his, this is the sign he had wanted so much to see, that those months of beating himself up weren’t in vain, weren’t something he was always going to berate himself for. He wasn’t a fuck up, he couldn’t be, not when Lian deserved better then that, not when holding her now made all that so worth it. Lian deserves so much, and she had only been alive for a few minutes, and Roy has decided she will get it all. 

She’s clutched against his chest, Roy’s nose pressed against her head while he sobs, holds her tight. 

There is so much relief. 

He feels a hand in his hair, playing with the loose ponytail he had barely gotten his hair into. It’s Dick, hushing him softly, trying to figure out what is happening, even if he is pretty sure he knows exactly what is going on.

“ She’s so fuckin’ beaut’ful. . . ” His nose is already clogged, voice heavy with emotions while he tries his damnedest to speak, “ Dick, what’m I gonna do? I can’t jus’ give her up. ”

The hand on the back of his head gives a gentle squeeze before he feels arms wrap around him, wrap around him and Lian, a deep pressure he sorely needed to keep him calm.

“ You wanna keep her, huh? ” Roy doesn’t answer, just nods, nose still buried into the crown of Lian’s head, sniffling between sobs. “ Then keep her. ”

It’s only three words, but they mean the world to Roy. It’s approval, validation, something he had been desperately looking for, that he had ever right to stake his claim on his daughter. He was going to take her home, and that little bit of encouragement was all he needed. 

She’s his, he is hers’. And he is going to do everything in his power to make sure she is taken care of, safe, and loved, loved with every fiber of his being.

Lian Nyugen - Harper deserved the world, and Roy was going to give it to her.

Roy doesn’t realize he has started to sob again, too consumed in too many emotions, too relieved to be anything but. 

They will be okay.


End file.
